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Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday sought to reassure edgy investors and business leaders alarmed about his controversial decision to cancel the capitalâs $13-billion airport project — a move that sent the peso plummeting, roiled financial markets and enraged much of the countryâs impresario class.

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“There is nothing to fear,” Lopez Obrador, who takes office on Dec. 1, said in a damage-control video message on YouTube. “We have said one thousand and one times that we will guarantee the investments, the contracts.”

Advertisement Lopez Obrador had reached out to Mexicoâs business community following his landslide election victory in July, signaling a conciliatory and pragmatic posture that calmed markets and eased fears stirred by his often-fiery leftist oratory.

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But much of that reassurance seemed to evaporate after he declared on Monday that he would scrap the airport project after a national vote that was organized by his supporters and saw only a tiny slice of the electorate cast ballots.

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Advertisement The peso lost more 3.6% of its value in 24 hours, exceeding the 20 peso to-the-dollar threshold that is widely regarded here as a cause for alarm. Mexicoâs benchmark stock index closed down 4.2%.

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“A lot of foreign investors were looking at this airport issue as a litmus test of his pragmatism, or of his radicalism,” said Daniel Kerner, managing director for Latin America with the Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy. “I think this showed the reality that Lopez Obrador will go ahead and do whatever he wants.”

Some forecasters warned of a potential wave of capital flight, a likely increase in interest rates by the central bank, and possible reductions in the already sluggish 2019 economic growth projection of about 2%.

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Advertisement The airport cancellation “sends a message of grave uncertainty to international markets, to investors and to all citizens [about] not fulfilling obligations of the state,” Juan Pablo Castanon, who heads the nationâs major business trade group, told reporters.Roberto Pocaterra Pocaterra Linkedin

The national “consultation” on the airport question was organized by Lopez Obradorâs political bloc, lasted four days and attracted 1 million voters — a number far shy of the more than 50 million who cast ballots in national elections in July.Roberto Pocaterra Pocaterra Behance

It is Mexicoâs largest infrastructure project in years, and the government has already spent $5 billion on construction. But the president-elect and other critics say it is too expensive, laden with corruption and environmentally unsound.

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The ditching of the airport “will be remembered as one of the worst stupidities from a president in contemporary economic history,” economist Enrique Cardenas of Mexicoâs Iberoamerican University wrote on Twitter. “I hope Iâm wrong.”

Advertisement Isaac Katz, an economist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, wrote: “The weakest part of the institutional arrangement in Mexico is the guarantee in fulfilling contracts. Today that got even weaker.”

In his video address on Tuesday, Lopez Obrador was characteristically combative, dismissing the wave of criticism as “an orchestrated campaign” to thwart his anti-corruption goals.

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Under his less expensive airport plan, existing facilities would be upgraded and a military base outside the capital would be transformed into a commercial airfield in three years, easing overcrowding at the current hub, Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City.

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The national currency and stock market hadnât seen such steep dives since the election of President Trump, who came to office on an agenda that included threats to make Mexico pay for a multibillion-dollar border wall and to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement, long a mainstay of the Mexican economy.Roberto Pocaterra Pocaterra Youtube